


Keeping the Flame

by svecounia



Category: Cirque du Soleil - Fandom, Cirque du Soleil: KÀ
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8017243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svecounia/pseuds/svecounia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Counselor reveres tradition, his son dismisses it, but long years down in the mines finally take their toll on the old man. As his health fades, his son scrapes together what he can for a proper funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping the Flame

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of ease, a quick cast of characters because no one has given names in the show:
> 
> The Twin Brother - Omare  
> The Twin Sister - Jimaya  
> The Counselor - Yoren  
> The Counselor's Son - Rensai  
> The Chief Archer - Kharvaach  
> The Chief Archer's Daughter - Yujin

Yoren's cough began, brittle and rough, just as autumn began freshening the humid summer air. "Pay it no mind," the old man growled dismissively, prodding the end of Rensai's walking stick with his toe to push him onward. Rensai didn't protest, but his brow furrowed and his ears stayed pricked for any more sudden outbursts. The attacks came time and time again and seemed to be the worst at night when his father laid down and settled on his back. Once Rensai had to pull Yoren up so he could work through it properly, coughs wracking his father's entire body for nearly a full minute, but Yoren snapped when Rensai suggested they call for a healer.

"Sooner poison me than be of any help," his rasped. "Go on, it is late, I will be fine."

And he was for several months. No better, but no worse, and Rensai began to accept the hacking coughs as his father's constant companion. Autumn's crisp sharpened into frosty pre-winter, and Rensai had to be more careful in the mornings as he picked his way along the path to his father's cottage, feeling ahead for ice. Inside the air was warm, close, and always thick with the scent of incense: Yoren burned it for Rensai's mother at every new moon, but the smell lingered much longer as though it had seeped into the very walls. "It guides her back when the moon cannot," Yoren explained for perhaps the thousandth time, and when he caught Rensai rolling his eyes behind his blindfold (usually a full-body movement anyway), he gave him a sharp prod in the ribs with one of the claves he always carried. "Disrespectful," he hissed. 

His father's slavish devotion to tradition was one quality Rensai was proud not to have inherited. Everything had to be measured, calculated, set down well in advance of each action as though his father were following a script laid out for him centuries ago. While Yoren wasted time grumbling about proper altar flowers and flying into fits every time his son dared pour tea with his left hand, Rensai had always been drawn, mothlike, to the cutting edge, the inventive, and the untested. Rensai's upbringing and training had been traditional at his father's insistence, but that was all, and when he'd grown too tall and wild for his father to beat back down with scorn and rebukes, it was years later before they finally met in the middle. "It's only us," Yoren had said, his voice uncharacteristically shaky as he bent to pick up the pieces of a shattered urn while Rensai stood over him, fists still clenched and breath still quick. "There is only you and me."

Rensai visited nearly every day now that his father's words had become truer than ever: it _was_ only them, two lone traitors in a sea of Imperialists, mistrusted by their new people and avoided by those they'd sought to lead. "Ingrates," Yoren spat every once in a while: the spearmen and archers he'd handpicked and stewarded, placed at the feet of their Chief at just the proper moment for promotions or accolades, nearly all of them ignored his gaze now whenever they had occasion to cross paths. Some had become tradesmen, some had even entered the Imperial army, but none paid Yoren thanks for the years of mentorship. It grated on Rensai. Skill was skill. It didn't matter how you cut your teeth so long as they were sharp, and if they enjoyed a life of comfort and renown because of his father, then it didn't matter what had happened to put them there. But that was the trouble with people so willing to sell their loyalty: they were always on the lookout for the next bidder.

So it was only natural that Yoren received few visitors besides Rensai when his health began to worsen. Omare came once, flanked by guards, to see if the rumors were true and that the counselor who'd once whispered such lies was now hardly able to draw breath to speak. "You think I'm going to attack you?" Rensai sneered. "Send them out, you don't need protection here, little emperor. Not today." Yoren laughed once before rough, hacking coughs cut him off and Rensai snarled for Omare to take his gloating elsewhere. 

Jimaya came alone the following day and tried to apologize on behalf of her brother. 

"He still mourns our parents, as do I," she admitted. "I promise he doesn't delight in this." 

Rensai snorted, then frowned in surprise when she pressed a small packet of herbs into his hands. The scent lingered on his fingers when he turned it over in his hands, rich and unfamiliar. 

"Brew a tea with it. It will help." 

"From your witless consort?" Rensai's lip curled in distaste – he didn't trust a thing that came from those Forest People, least of all from someone who insisted on titling himself _Firefly Boy_. 

"Then don't use it," Jimaya's response came easily and carelessly. "But it's just as good as anything the healers will give you and the herbs are difficult to grow here. Maybe something different will ease him a bit more."

Sometimes Rensai wondered about her – she didn't despise him half as much as Omare did, and whenever they spoke his barbs often bounced off her like a stone skipping over water. He grumbled his thanks, waved her out, and she withdrew. Unappealing though he found the twins' company, he would never tire of the way they always retreated when he dismissed them, royalty or not. 

Yoren was asleep again when their dear former Chief Archer came one evening, and good thing, too. Rensai recognized the heavy, thudding footsteps and turned on the visitor at once, snatching up his walking stick, but Kharvaach only laughed.

"At ease, boy. I won't deny my old counselor the slow death he deserves. It's rare to see Yoren in a situation he can't talk his way out of – how could I miss a chance to visit?"

"Still so sore over our little schism," Rensai jeered. "I'd be more concerned if you were any sort of man of action."

"I will admit it's rather satisfying to see him like this." Kharvaach's voice was approaching closer and Rensai shifted himself between the voice and his father's bed. "All those machinations, all that scheming… and here he is brought low by too much time down in the mines. It hardly befits his illustrious career. Such a shame." 

Rensai swung his walking stick forward in an arc, and he heard Kharvaach take a startled step back to dodge it. He locked the staff under his shoulder, flicked his hair out of his face, and smiled. 

"A greater shame that you still find satisfaction in a victory you had no hand in winning. Move along, _Chief._ There's little honor in fighting a blind man and I know you're hard up for it."

"You'd better arrange for a proper funeral." Kharvaach's footsteps withdrew towards the door, and the icy winter air blasted Rensai in the face a moment later. "Counselor Yoren was always so traditional. He would want it."

The door snapped shut and Rensai glared after him, then turned and felt forward to pull his father's blankets tighter against the lingering chill. Yoren slept on, his breaths even for now.

The reminder of the funeral stuck in Rensai's back like a pin. There was no use denying it – despite his father's protests, healers had visited over the months, reluctant but professional, and never had any useful advice. The mountain mines were foreign to them, they'd never seen someone whose lungs could have grown tainted in this way, and herbal remedies were at best a momentary relief. Death was nothing new to Rensai – he was practically born into it – and he'd seen enough of battle to understand and accept it. But his father had seemed ancient and impenetrable for as long as he had known him, a living symbol of something older and permanent, constantly looking to the past while marching on into the future. Shame stung him when he realized he was grateful that he couldn't actually see his father this way. This was not the way of the world Rensai knew.

Then there was the matter of Imperial funeral rites, which could hardly be described as anything but comical. Like everything else they did, their ceremonies were too raucous, too lively – where was the time for reflection and remembrance amid all that celebration and music? They cheered and toasted when they ought to be silent and somber. It was an embarrassment to the dead. It wouldn't do for his father. But the mountain was far and he couldn't imagine they would be willing to provide enough wood for a proper pyre, least of all for a traitorous ambassador. And even if they were willing, Rensai thought bitterly, there was no one to shoot the flaming arrow and set it alight. It was an heir's duty, and he could not aim. 

The thought plagued him for weeks, through the waxes and wanes of his father's health, until deep into midwinter when fever seized his father by the chest and refused to let go. Rensai spent every day at his side, piling blankets, changing out wet rags that seemed to heat in mere moments under Yoren's flushed skin, encouraging his father to eat or at least take water, but there was little for it. Kharvaach returned to laugh, and by then Rensai didn't have the energy or heart to throw him out. When he wasn't clutching his father's hand and listening for any whisper of wisdom or feverish nonsense, he tidied the cottage and lit incense at the altar. 

Jimaya happened to be there when death claimed his father. She had stopped by to leave behind more herbs, but her tone told Rensai that she hadn't expected the situation to be nearly as grim. The tiny cottage was too tidy, Rensai had had little else to do while his father alternately thrashed and shivered in the throes of fever, slept, and rasped non-sequiturs that could only have come from faded memories of his time as Counselor. Jimaya made herself at home anyway, pouring tea that Rensai refused, completely focused on his father. 

"You're growing thin, boy," Yoren growled, for once focused with some clarity on his son in front of him. A bitter smile tugged at the edges of Rensai's lips.

"Not much occasion to train."

"Better set an example for the rest of them. They'll look to you and me." Congested coughs shook through him and Rensai didn't bother asking whom his father meant. "There is only you and me."

Jimaya excused herself in silence not an hour later when death stilled Yoren's chest. Ragged breathing fell silent and Yoren's hand grew slack and cold in Rensai's. A leaden weight settled over Rensai and sank into his heart, constricting it in an iron grip while grief shook his shoulders and blurred the edges of his awareness. Only a few minutes later did he realize he was cradling his father's head in his hands just as his father had done for him when he lay battered and blinded on the battlefield.

* * *

They couldn't accommodate the pyre his father had wanted. Or rather, they could, but there was no rocky land high enough to let the ashes blow into the wind, no opposite cliff from which to fire the flaming arrow. It was just as well. Who would attend to reflect and remember as was tradition? Not the sycophantic spearmen, who had cleaved themselves all too willingly to their new emperor and empress. Not Kharvaach, and if he tried, Rensai would do all he could to drive him away. Omare perhaps, out of some kind of misguided, piteous respect for a man he'd never known but had a hand in his meaningless coming of age. He supposed Jimaya might be there, but he preferred that she simply not bother. She'd been the one to deliver the news about the pyre, and she explained that unless they went to the mountain itself, the geography just didn’t support the funeral Rensai had described.

"What about a boat?"

So two days later, Rensai waded into the icy water and pushed the boat bearing his father's body outward towards the sea. The waves carried it away effortlessly while he stood there, waist deep, and let the cold claim his limbs and turn them numb. It was several minutes before he finally made his way back to shore, led by the warmth of the bonfire blazing on the beach. It was no pyre, but it was the best he could do. One final failure of tradition at his father's expense. 

He took up the bow he'd staked in the sand and felt for the quiver of arrows, drawing one and holding its cotton-wrapped tip over the flame. He closed his eyes pointlessly but pictured the scene before him anyway: a long expanse of beach, the slate gray ocean, and somewhere ahead, hopefully straight forward, the boat carrying his father's body further and further away. He loosed the arrow, heard it whistle through the air, then splash into the waves. He snatched up another, aimed, fired – another splash. 

He tried a third, a fourth, a fifth, and just as a growl of frustration and despair escaped him, a gentle hand pressed a sixth arrow into his. He knew her at once and he nearly swayed on his feet, overcome as the weight of his mistakes, his failures, and his loneliness crashed together in the way only she could cause. 

"Back straight." He tensed when Yujin's hand came to rest on his back and she placed the other on his string elbow to encourage it higher. Her robes whipped in the wind as she paced around him, judging the distance, nudging gentle reminders where he'd let his emotions compromise his form. Satisfied, she came close against him and guided his body to the proper angle from behind, one hand over his bow arm and one on the opposite shoulder, and it took all his strength not to lower the bow and lean into her. 

"Loose."

Rensai let it fly and the arrow met its target with a dull _thunk:_ he heard the boat burst into crackling flames. He dropped the bow with a shuddering breath and his walking stick met his fingertips instead; Yujin had leaned it against his shoulder. He clung to it, wishing he could cling to her instead and thank her for coming, tell her what a marvel she was, how selfless and perfect she was to see that her father's traitor had as close to a proper funeral as possible. He didn't deserve her kindness just as his father didn't deserve this makeshift, patched-up rite of passage, but it was the best he could deliver, always over the top and never sufficient. She lingered close when he hung his head. The blindfold caught his tears before they could slip down his cheeks.

He struck a match when he arrived back at home. The first one burned his fingertips and died as he rifled through his drawers – it had been a long time since he'd stowed the box away, but with so few possessions to his name, it wasn’t difficult to find. He struck a second match, lit the stick of incense, blew it out, and gently fitted it into the holder. He had no alter, he had no flowers, but this would guide his father back when the moon could not.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been fun fleshing out more of the cast! Thanks for riding along and just assuming it's normal for an emperor and empress to have nothing better to do than look in on the Father/Son Worst Enemy Duo. Still blown away that these get even one hit -- thanks so much for reading and I welcome all feedback, positive and negative! Especially re: Counselor's Son characterization, because he is a challenge between his attitude and the setting. Just don't tell me if you've come up with a better name than Rensai, because it's too late for me to change it and I don't want to know. 
> 
> Ugh, that reminds me that I didn't discuss traditional naming conventions! I had a whole thing! Next time.


End file.
